Muslim Writer Examines Gujarat Riots:How and why did this terrible thing happen?

[krsna]

Muslim Writer Examines Gujarat Riots

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MUMBAI, INDIA, September 4, 2004:

 

In February of this

year in Godhra in Gujarat, a Muslim mob set railway carriages on fire

and some 57 men, women and children, reportedly Karsevaks returning

from Ayodhya, were charred to death. The reaction was swift and equally

brutal. Hindu mobs in Ahmedabad and elsewhere torched Muslim shops and

slaughtered Muslim men, women and children. Intellectual opinion was

sharply divided over what happened. Charge and counter-charge flew

thick and fast and it became impossible to separate truth from fiction.

How and why did this terrible thing happen? Some called it genocide, a

pogrom aimed at eliminating Muslims from Gujarat, forgetting that

genocide is one-sided. Events in Gujarat were vengeful riots during

which both Hindus and many Muslims were killed. Dr. Rafiq Zakaria, a

distinguished Muslim with impeccable liberal credentials, was so deeply

moved he could not help writing his book, "Communal Rage in Secular

India." He attributes the Gujarat killings and other riots to sectarian

politics which are a "hangover of the British rule and the consequence

of Partition." He asserts that the miseries the Muslims are undergoing

in South Asia today are of their own making, for they had asked for

Partition, ironically becoming its worst victims. He adds, "Had it not

been for the secular temper of a large number of Hindus and the broad

humanism which is the kernel of Hinduism, the extermination of Indian

Muslims would have been easily carried out."

 

Dr. Zakaria did not write the book to denounce Hindus, but to convince

them that their rage against Muslims is misplaced. He has used his

considerable scholarship to prove his case by, for example, going back

a thousand years to the case of the Babri Masjid in Ayodha, which he

says was built by Mir Baqi (a Shia) who was one of the generals of

Babur (a Sunni). Mir Baqi built it for the exclusive use of Shias.

(Sunnis and Shias don't, as a rule, pray in each others' mosques.)

During the controversy in 1988, the General Secretary of the All-India

Shia Conference and the Shaikul Imam of Najaf, the highest religious

authority of the Shias, affirmed that it was a Shia mosque, and Shias

had no objection to its re-location in a nearby village, the birthplace

of Mr. Baqi. But as the Sunnis had meanwhile taken over the mosque and

named it Babri Masjid, the matter assumed a different connotation. The

rest is tragic history.

 

Dr. Zakaria argues that that Muslim rulers were not as anti-Hindu as is

generally believed, and that there have been harmful religious

misconceptions about Islam and Islamic rulers encouraged for centuries

- not only by the West and Christianity, but by Muslims themselves. Dr.

Zakaria tries to clarify jihad, zakat and fatwa. This latter, he

asserts, is an innovation which has no religious sanctity, and has been

misused by clerics. He explains Islam's opposition to idol-worship and

also reminds readers Hinduism's "central plank remains monotheistic."

He praises the work of Shivaji, Swami Vivekananda and Sardar Patel, but

says that Muslims are despondent, depressed and receive no sympathy

from Hindus who regard them as "troublesome creatures." He advises

Muslims to look within, relinquish their emphasis on differences,

discard worn-out prejudices and outmoded habits, equip themselves to

become an integral part of the modern mainstream and introduce certain

changes to their Personal Law "without compromising the Quranic

injunctions." Although Muslims have to carry historical baggage, they

should not be victimized for whatever some Muslim rulers did in the

past. He recalls the words of Allama Iqbal, "Let the temple bells

mingle with the muezzin's call, let us erase every trace of alienation

and break the barriers of separation, let us build a new temple of

unity."